Lucky to be alive

Published 1:00 am, Wednesday, April 5, 2006

Jay Strobino curled into the Iraqi ground and braced for death. His body slumped against a dead man, an insurgent he'd shot moments earlier outside a small house.

Strobino knew death was coming soon.

The 21-year-old
U.S. Army
soldier from Kent couldn't rise up and run. His right femur had been snapped by an insurgent's bullet seconds earlier.

He couldn't grip his gun. Another bullet had sliced through his right forearm.

Now the same man who gave him these wounds stood just yards away, pointing his AK47.

"All I could do was roll over," Strobino said, remembering the Feb. 1 battle in a small village southwest of Baghdad. "I thought that was it."

It nearly was. The insurgent sprayed several more shots into Strobino. Two rounds shattered his right leg. Two bullets ripped into his side and left a soft-ball-size hole in his back. Another bullet entered his shoulder and cut through his neck.

Another couple shots likely were stopped by his body armor.

The man stopped shooting and ran.

Today, nearly two months later, Jay Strobino walks with crutches and hopes to one day ski again. During a month's break from Army hospitals, he sees friends and family daily in Kent.

Friends ask him why he's so happy. He still has months of therapy ahead. He can't plant his right leg.

"It's easy," Strobino tells them. "I have my life."

Strobino started his second tour of duty in Iraq last October. In his first stint, he served in Kuwait, then spend most of his time in Mosul.

Heading to Iraq for his second tour, Jay told his mom they might not be able to communicate with each other as often. His departure left her shaken.

"I just had a bad feeling about the second one," Sue Strobino said.

Over the next four months, Jay Strobino often found himself under gunfire. Insurgents would speed into town, shoot at American soldiers, then speed away.

He expected that to happen Feb. 1, when his Army group came under fire. He and about nine others had searched a home for weapons. They were just leaving when a pickup truck filled with insurgents started firing on them from about a quarter-mile away.

"I figured we'd run down there and they'd run away," Strobino said.

Several American solders darted behind a row of houses, getting closer to the insurgents. They, including Strobino, shot and killed several of them. But an insurgent they couldn't reach continually sprayed shots at them from a nearby house.

Strobino inched toward him, along the side of the house. Peering around the corner, he saw the man's assault rifle, but he couldn't grab it.

Strobino leaped in front of the building; the insurgent stood less than three feet away, pointing his rifle at him. The Kent man squeezed off three shots, hitting his enemy in the mid-section. The insurgent's bullets struck his right leg and forearm.

"It's pretty tough to miss" that close," Strobino said.

Unable to run away, he crumpled to the ground, laying against the dead insurgent's body.

His squad leader, braced near an Army truck nearby, yelled at him to hold his weapon. He couldn't. He couldn't grip his grenade.

Then came the second round of shots.

Another U.S. soldier dragged him around the building, sheltering him from more gunfire.

Strobino stared at his body. His right leg had exploded, spreading muscle and bone across the ground. He was surprised there wasn't more blood.

"I figured it would be crazy -pouring out," he said.

More than 10 minutes later, his comrades were racing him toward an Army helicopter. He screamed for them to hold his body by his hips, sparing his leg.

"I could feel it tearing apart," Strobino said.

On the helicopter, he wiggled all his toes. In the hospital, as doctors pumped blood into his body and cleaned his wounds, they told him the leg could be saved. The bullets missed every main artery and organ.

The next day, he slowly scribbled his parents' Kent telephone number on a pad. After numerous tries, his weak handwriting was legible. A fellow soldier called Sue Strobino and her husband, Jay.

"Your son is OK. He's been shot twice, once in the leg and once in the arm," he told them.

Over the next several days, Sue Strobino peppered her son with questions on the phone. Why do you have a breathing tube? Were there more bullet wounds, she asked.

"It's hard having a nurse for a mom," Jay laughed.

She eventually learned seven bullets had pierced her son's body. "You didn't know whether to get on your knees or throw up," she said.

More than two weeks after Jay was shot, he was transferred back to the United States. Twenty minutes after he was admitted to
Eisenhower Medical Center
in Augusta, Ga., his parents and 20-year-old sister, Courtney, walked in.

"I thought it was awesome. . . . They weren't even done checking me in yet," he remembers.

For days, his family stayed with him as he drifted in and out of sleep. After doctors put a titanium rod in his leg to hold together the remains of his femur, he'd walk the halls with his parents and sister.

His dad and sister left, but his mother stayed on. Her co-workers at
New Milford Hospital
donated more than two months of their vacation time so she could be with him.

Letters flooded in - plenty of them from strangers.

"I had so much support from everyone," he said.

Strobino came back to Kent on March 20. Since then, he's celebrated his grandmother's birthday and visited friends he hadn't seen since high school.

In two weeks, he'll head back to Georgia for more therapy. This summer, doctors hope to remove excess bone growth. After that, he'll focus on walking again.

He hopes to be on his feet again by next year. Then it's off to college - somewhere.

Every day, one thing drives him.

"I should have died. Even with my life, I should have been paralyzed," he said.

"It's a miracle he is here," Sue Strobino said, looking at her son in their living room.

"You're a super-hero," she said, gently fixing his shirt collar. "You're bound for great things. Maybe a Nobel laureate in science?"